Although science cannot pause to describe the beauties of nature, it ought, nevertheless, to study, in a general manner, the characteristics of the Beautiful, as it appears to us in the physical world and in the beings which it contains. This is the subject of a somewhat extended chapter, with the following title: _Of the Beautiful in Nature_. Hegel herein considers the question from the particular point of view of his philosophy, and he applies his theory of the _Idea_. Nevertheless, the results at which he arrives, and the manner in which he describes the forms of physical beauty, can be comprehended and accepted independently of his system, little adapted, it must be confessed, to cast light upon this subject. The Beautiful in nature is the first manifestation of the Idea. The successive degrees of beauty correspond to the development of life and organization in beings. Unity is an essential characteristic of it. Thus, in the mineral, beauty consists in the arrangement or disposition of the parts, in the force which resides in them, and which reveals itself in this unity. The solar system offers us a more perfect unity and a higher beauty. The bodies in that system, while preserving entire their individual existence, co-ordinate themselves into a whole, the parts of which are independent, although attached to a common centre, the sun. Beauty of this order strikes us by the regularity of the movements of the celestial bodies. A unity more real and true is that which is manifested in organized and living beings. The unity here consists in a relation of reciprocity and of mutual dependence between the organs, so that each of them loses its independent existence in order to give place to a wholly ideal unity which reveals itself as the principle of life animating them. Life is beautiful in nature: for it is essence, force, the idea realized under its first form. Nevertheless, beauty in nature is still wholly external; it has no consciousness of itself; it is beautiful solely for an intelligence which sees and contemplates it.